


Balancing the Scales

by Neila_Nuruodo



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ascians (Final Fantasy XIV), Bad Ending, Gen, Warrior of Light death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 04:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20594867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neila_Nuruodo/pseuds/Neila_Nuruodo
Summary: ***Shadowbringers Spoilers***The Warrior of Light obeys Hydaelyn, seeking to stop the Ascians once and for all.  This is the final confrontation with Elidibus.Bad end for WoL.





	Balancing the Scales

You ready your weapon, frowning. He won’t get away from you this time. Across the Chrysalis, Elidibus bares his teeth in a snarl. You’ve chased him now for months, across two shards and the Source, battering his minions aside, tearing through distractions that threatened to divert you from your ultimate goal. _The Ascians cannot be suffered to continue;_ so spoke the Word of the Mother, and so you have pursued him everywhere he has tried to evade you. At great cost you discovered the methods to force your way into his final haven, and now he has nowhere to flee.

“Have you truly learned nothing from your time on the First, you fool? You have seen first-hand the devastation caused when the balance skews too far toward the Light. Why do you persist in your path of absolute destruction?”

He stands with one foot forward, fists clenched so tight you wonder if the claws on his gloves cut him. If so, he shows no sign of noticing it.

“Is this your true aim? To bring stasis to the entirety of the star?” He shakes his head, bitter. “Not content to finish off the last of the Ascians—the Ancients—you would also end your own fragmented people? Or did you never stop to consider the ramifications of a Flood overtaking the Source?”

You pause, frowning. What does he mean by that? He seems to sense your sudden hesitation, smiling nastily.

“You did not, then. You forget that the shards are linked to the Source. The shards affect the Source, yes; but recall that the Source is the lynchpin, the point upon which everything else revolves. Should it be swept by a Flood, it will rush through the elemental links to the shards and almost certainly spark floods upon each of them as well. It will presage an end to all life.”

You shake your head, trying to rid yourself of his words. He lies; Ascians always lie. You cannot trust him. Of course he wouldn’t want to see Light’s supremacy. Always he has tried to exaggerate the danger of your growing power. Baring your teeth, glaring, you step forward.

“And still you continue to menace an emissary? You truly have learned nothing. To threaten one who should be a noncombatant…” He shakes his head. “Very well. You would complete what you began with the star’s sundering, and I cannot allow such a thing to occur. You have forced my hand.” Motions vicious, he rips his mask off, throwing it to the ground, tossing the hood back from his head. His brand ignites, flaring, soaring up as though to obscure his features in the mask’s stead. “Look upon the face of the savior of this star. Mark it well. Bear it with you unto the Lifestream. But you will not have my name. I do not know you. I _never_ knew you.”

He raises one hand, and darkness gouts out from him, swelling into a raging whirlwind, and you flinch, covering your face as it stings your cheeks and blinds your eyes. When it finally abates, you blink your eyes open, peering around in the gloom. Where is he? The platform stands empty, but you know he cannot have escaped; the Scions bend every effort toward preventing that, and you trust they would not fail you at your most desperate hour.

You look up, wondering where the large statue of dark crystal went. Then a glimmer of brightness catches your eye. Like an aperture dialing open, it grows, stretching, unfolding to become a pair of feathery wings as bright and gold-traced as a sin-eater’s. They reach full extension, and at their join you now see a figure, humanoid but writ large, with skin the color of hematite and eyes like black, starry orbs. A white-gold halo twists over his head, and white robes trail to black as they follow his figure downward. Behind his head curves a golden bar, elaborately curved and swooped and engraved. Scales, you realize; darkness hangs suspended from one side, light from the other. He holds in his hand what seems to be the same staff Emet-Selch wielded, bearing a golden shield in the other.

As you watch another pair of wings unfolds from behind him. These are feathered, as well, but darker, untouched by gold, an unrelieved gray. They stretch further, engulfing a large arc of the ground upon which you stand. And another set unfolds, darker yet, and less beautiful, traced with something that could not be feathers. And another set, almost pure black and leathery. And another pair, fully black and twisted, and then another… you didn’t know they could get darker, but they do. Again and again, redefining black, redefining absolute, until they wrap all the way behind you, engulfing the circle of crystal upon which you stand in a complete sphere of encroaching darkness.

His voice echoes through the space, low and dark, resonant with power. “Turn back, Warrior. The world is not yet lost, the balance not yet tipped. Do not bring about the final doom…”

Your heart had quailed at the way he’d enveloped you, but, seeing him hesitate, you seize the opportunity, charging in to attack. He hisses his fury as you make your first strike, and his retaliation leaves you staggered. Scarcely do you recover your senses but he attacks again, this time drowning you in magic, in darkness. You fight it back, choking on its power, and he stuns you again. Just like that, you fall, overwhelmed, kneeling in a desperate attempt not to collapse. Almost gently, he sends a lance of darkness to pierce you, and you feel your soul separate, streaming back to reality and dispersing.

You gasp, panting, eyes flying open. You are in darkness. Where—

Wings. You struggle to sit up, frowning as you realize you are naked.

“That was for Nabriales, whom you killed simply to see if such a thing could be done.”

You blink up at Elidibus, still in the full of his glory. His face is harsh as he stares down at you. You see your weapon, discarded on the ground nearby, and snatch it up.

“You truly do not learn. Do you not wonder why I retrieved you from the Lifestream?”

You ignore his lies, charging at him, determined to end him somehow.

“Igeyorhm.”

Falling, you shriek soundlessly as darkness severs your soul from your form again.

The disorientation is less severe this time, and you roll to your feet more quickly.

“It is well that your soul is so strong. No ordinary soul could remain intact without more time to recover in the Lifestream. Will you now listen?”

You take up your fallen weapon, vowing not to fail your goddess, and attack.

“For Lahabrea.”

You fall.

You try to rise, but weakness spasms your newly-reformed muscles, leaving you trembling.

“You have no more reserves to sustain you, and I have no more desire to struggle against an assailant who refuses to learn. _Will you now listen_?”

A shaking hand reaches to your weapon. Spasmodic fingers cannot clench it, but you flex them, fighting to regain your fine control. You manage to seize it, and your attack is weak, uncoordinated.

A sigh echoes through the space enclosed by his wings. “One came to you bearing the truth. He told you of our past, of _your_ past, and sought the key to the future. He, too, you destroyed. For him, for my brother, for Emet-Selch do I consign you unto the final oblivion.” He holds the staff aloft, and darkness streams from seemingly everywhere, gathering, concentrating upon itself until it seems it would warp reality. He sweeps the staff toward you, sending a slice of reality-eating darkness at you. It strikes, and your very soul howls in agony utterly unlike what it has experienced before. The pure intense darkness fills you floods you _shatters_ everything that your soul contains _antithetical annihilation_

gone.


End file.
